


More Than Just Numbers On A Wrist

by afteriwake



Series: WIP Big Bang Accomplishments [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Countdowns, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Sherlock Holmes, Protective Sherlock, Romantic Soulmates, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Has a Heart, Sherlock Holmes Loves Molly Hooper, Sherlock-centric, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Stubborn Molly, Transfer Of Time, Ultimate Sacrifice, not enough time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-01-30 16:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12657426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: Sherlock knows six years with Molly will not be enough, not when her counter says he'll have to live another forty years without her. And she won't take his time from him, any of it, choosing to accept her fate. But Sherlock knows the world needs Molly Hooper more than it needs him, even if she can't see it herself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I owe **come2myrescue** about 50K worth of fic and I was told angsty was good, and I was perusing a lit of soulmate AUs I had for a fic for one of my other friends who I owed fic to created by **silentpeaches** and I saw one that just was right up my alley for angsty feels (" _You and your soulmate’s clocks have each other’s life spans on it but you can give your time to your soulmate if you want to so they can live longer. Again, because the universe is sadistic af._ "). I may choose other less happy soulmate AUs to write fic for just to wring angst out of unfair situations.

From the first day he had met her, he knew there would never be enough time for them.

Every pair of soul mates had the lifespans of their partner etched on their wrist. Raised like braille, you could run your fingers over how many years, months, days, hours and minutes your soulmate had left. And his was only going to live until the age of forty. He hadn’t thought much of it at all, not caring for his soulmate and rather being happy to engage in intellectual pursuits over emotional ones, until the day he walked into St Barts morgue and saw the brunette with her hair in a ponytail and a splatter guard on her face with a whirring bone saw in hand. He felt his wrist burn and knew the next time he looked, the raised numbers on his wrist would be black. It was confirmed when she looked up and nearly dropped the bone saw in her hand.

And he knew having her for such a short time would never be enough.

Margaret Anne Hooper was the only person who stirred his heart, and the more he got to know her the more in love he fell. She was thirty-four when they met; six years. They would have six years before she shuffled off this mortal coil, to steal so eloquent a term. And what made it worse was her own counter said he had nearly twice as long as she had been alive to live without her. It wasn’t _right_. It wasn’t _fair_.

He tried to give her some of his time before. Twenty years, he said. Less time he had to live without her, more time they had together. But she refused him. Said she had made her peace with having such a short time with him, and the world would need Sherlock Holmes more than her.

Bloody hell, didn’t she realize he needed her more than the world needed him?

It was hard for him to admit, hard for him to form the words to tell her just how important she was to him. Not just because they were soulmates, but because his world had seemed so empty before he had met her. His world had been filled with nothing but facts, and she made his heart feel passion again for the first time in ages. He loved her more than he could ever tell her, and he needed to because she didn’t understand. He didn’t want to live without her. He couldn’t. If he went back to the deep, dark hole his life had been before, he would end it all and that was forty years wasted.

He wasn’t about to let that happen. Not if there was something he could do to prevent a life wasted.


	2. Chapter 2

“I won’t let you do it, Sherlock,” she said. She never got angry about his pestering, because that’s really what it was, but she always told him no in such a resigned tone. Resigned. How could someone be resigned to the fact they only had six years with their soulmate?

“Molly, please,” he said, but she never understood. There was no way he could convey in any amount of words, whether they be few or many, how much he dreaded living a life without her. How he didn’t want to because the light would be out of his life.

Especially since the time was fluid, once you met your soulmate.

Yes, one could transfer time or even take time from their soulmate, but fate would have its own ideas as well. Accidents did happen, after all, even in a world such as theirs. You could wake up one morning and your clock would have said normally that you had years and years left, only to find there were no more indentations on your skin and your soulmate had died in their sleep. It was cruel and vicious and he hated it, now that he had Molly in his life.

He had forty years.

She had six.

And neither of them knew if that was what they _truly_ had, which made him want to give her time even more.

“Twenty years, Molly. Twenty years and we can have a family, start to grow old together.”

“Six years is not enough, Molly. It just isn’t. Not for me, not for you. Don’t you see that?”

“The world needs you just as much as me. More than me, even. Please, let me give you time.”

“Time is fluid, and I could lose you so much faster. Don’t you see? Please let me give you a gift of time.”

All of these things were things he wanted to tell her but he couldn’t get out. Maybe if he could, she would agree. But he didn’t know, and he couldn’t try. But then again, if the choice was his, they’d have a hundred years together and the damnable clocks on their wrist would simply disappear while they still lived, and all would be well.

But, then again, life never went as planned, as he would soon learn.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a day of celebration, though tempered, as always, by knowing Molly was going to get to share so little of the future they would have with him. The future, she informed him, that would involve a child. He was elated, of course, and tried not to show any trace of bitterness that Molly would only get a few scant years with their child. She would get _some_ time, and she was content enough with that.

But even Molly seemed pensive and had been thumbing the raised numbers on her wrist. His own had not changed, but he had the sinking suspicion hers had. If that was the case, they had no time to lose.

“Molly,” he said gently, pulling her out of the rain as they walked back to Baker Street after a celebratory dinner with friends. “Your wrist. You keep rubbing it. How little time do I have left now?”

She bit her lip for a moment and then sighed. “It keeps going from forty years to a different time tonight,” she said, as though she was going to cry.

“Then let me give you what I have left,” he said. She opened her mouth to protest but he shook his head, placing a hand on her abdomen. “The world needs you. Our child needs you. I will give you half of the forty and maybe it will stop fluctuating.”

He could see tears forming at the corners of her eyes and she nodded. “Alright.”

It was then he saw the car. Drunken drivers were still a problem in London and he knew he’d have enough time to save one of them.

Her.

Molly.

His soul mate.

He said the words to transfer his years to her, whatever was left, just seconds before he pushed her away and felt the full impact of the car as it made its way onto the pavement. He bounced onto the hood and he knew, then, this was the end. He might have minutes, seconds, and as the car sped off and he landed on the ground Molly scrambled to his side.

“I have forty years,” she said, tears flowing down as she grasped his hand with one hand and smoothed his hair back with another. “Oh, you damned fool. How can I live without you?”

“You’ll...have our...child,” he said, the words hurting to get out. “I love...you...Molly.”

“I love you too, Sherlock. I always will.” The last thing he felt was her lips on his forehead and then...nothing. No coldness, no warmth, no pain, just darkness. 

And then...light. Sound. Excruciating pain. He opened his eyes and he saw Molly was there still. He moved his thumb as best he could to her wrist and felt a twenty.

She’d given him back half of what he’d given her.

He knew he had serious injuries, he may never walk again, but her love for him pulled him back from death. Somehow, she had managed to do something he’d never heard of before. She’d managed to cheat the system. Then he knew, that whatever time they had left, no matter how hard it might be, they would be by each other's side through it all, thick and thin, because they were soulmates, in all senses of the word.


End file.
